


a love story in five scars

by littledust



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-12
Updated: 2012-08-12
Packaged: 2017-11-11 23:19:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/484001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littledust/pseuds/littledust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five scars Clint and Natasha told each other about.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a love story in five scars

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the promptathon at LJ's be-compromised.

_left thumb_

He can tell she doesn't know what to make of him. He surprised her with his offer of more gratifying employment. She let it register on her face for just a second, more in her eyes than anywhere else. She has pretty eyes. Pretty everything else, too.

There's no point in pretending he doesn't notice her looks and that she doesn't notice him noticing. Clint leans back as much as he can in the plane seat, slouching into the role of the handsome soldier. It won't fool the Black Widow, but fiction is comforting. Her arms, crossed so hard her hands are clenched around her elbows, loosen.

"Nice scar," Clint says, tapping his thumb. "Does it have a story?"

She gives him an ironic thumbs up, showcasing the jagged line of white just above the knuckle. "In Russia, even our ballet accidents are tragic," she quips, startling a laugh out of him.

(Later, she'll tell him the story of a ballerina who nearly sacrificed a finger for vital information. Much later, she'll whisper how much it scares her that she would have sacrificed more.)

_palm of the hand_

"I bet you don't take sugar in anything," Clint says with a crooked smile, raising his coffee (dash of milk, one sugar) in toast.

"Sweets are fine as long as they're not standing in the way of me and caffeine," Natasha replies, bumping her styrofoam cup against his. It took her first undercover mission for her to experience coffee as anything other than something you gulped to stay awake a few extra hours, and no amount of trips to coffee shops have shaken the association. Tea remains her vice, and Clint knows about her predilection for picking up her favorite brand whenever a mission takes her to England. He's just teasing her.

"Heads up," Clint says, setting his coffee down and picking up his binoculars. "Our lads have a visitor."

Natasha pushes the curtain to the side so she can look out the window as well. She can feel the heat from Clint's body, could move just a millimeter to the right to touch him. She's still deciding what to do with the information. "Looks like my favorite HYDRA agent from a distance. Let me see?"

He hands over the binoculars and Natasha blinks, registering the thin line of scar tissue on his palm. She raises the binoculars to her eyes. "Definitely the HYDRA guy who almost caught up with me in Tallahassee. Where's the scar from?"

She turns quick enough to catch his grimace as he flexes his hand, fingers curling in towards his palm. "I like to tell everyone it's from a bar fight." He goes quiet after that, looking past her at nothing in particular. Natasha waits. "Do you want to hear the truth?" he asks at last.

It's a test. "Yes," she allows, all of her instincts telling her to say _no_. Sometimes instincts are just programming.

"I caught the wrong side of one of your knives once. You know, before we knew each other."

She remembers that night, the absurdity of ducking arrows along with bullets. "I'll aim better next time," she promises, just to watch him laugh.

_across the kneecap_

The Budapest mission takes them to the Hotel Gellért. They're on the trail of an exiled dictator with a taste for luxury and, apparently, mineral baths. "You always get the fun jobs," Clint protests after they've checked in and set up their room.

Her smile is a red flicker. "I clean up better than you."

"True," Clint acknowledges, turning away when Natasha starts stripping off her travel clothes. As far as he can tell, she's nowhere near as casual about nudity in front of anyone else, barring a target. Part of it's their friendship; more of it's the automatic way she uses her body as a weapon. There are times when she leans into him, eyes half-lidded in unspoken promise--and then pulls away, face smooth as she bites back years of training.

Or maybe Clint's dead wrong. Natasha is a hard woman to know, to make a substantial understatement.

Clad in a stunning navy blue bathing suit, Natasha makes her way to the mineral baths and charms the hell out of their dictator. Things are going well--Clint would go as far as to say swimmingly--until the explosions begin and they end up fighting their way out of the hotel. Natasha steals a handgun and a pair of sandals in between bouts of hand-to-hand combat. They never make it back to the rest of their gear, though, and Natasha is still her bathing suit when they hole up in an abandoned basement. It's January.

"We're back in pursuit as soon as you give us the all clear," Clint says into his phone. Natasha is sitting on a crate, knees drawn up against her chest. There's just enough light to illuminate the goosebumps on her arms. "You tell us as soon as possible, got it?"

"I give the orders around here," Nick Fury says before Clint hangs up.

"Scoot over." Clint shrugs off his jacket and drapes it over her shoulders, then sits next to her. "Don't take this the wrong way, but I think you should put your feet on my lap," he adds.

"Agent Barton, I do declare," Natasha says in near perfect Southern drawl, but turns to obey nonetheless. Clint rubs her lower legs up and down, trying not to dwell on the smoothness of her skin. He doesn't have gloves. This keeps his hands warm. This keeps her toes from getting frostbite.

His fingers brush a faint raised line on her knee. "Bike accident," Natasha says. Her voice is soft, all trace of flirtation gone. "It's one of the only things I remember from before the Red Room. I guess the pain is what stays with you."

Clint's hands curl around her knees. Her gaze on his face feels as heavy as a caress, as a promise. "Pain and good friends," Natasha finishes, laying her hands over his.

_left thigh_

Natasha waits until well after midnight before she climbs into Clint's hospital room. He startles awake, hands clutching for a bow and arrow that aren't there.

"Visiting hours are a little earlier," he says as she closes the window against the humidity. Her head whips around and her brows draw together in a glare. "Or whenever's good for you, that's good for me. It's been a while since I've seen you."

"You were busy getting your leg broken," Natasha snaps, indicating both his suspended leg and his stupidity with one expansive gesture. This is foolish. She came here to wish him well, not to scold him. Still, the words tumble out of her mouth. "What on earth were you thinking? The last time I checked, the bow was a long-range weapon."

"You're much better at this than Fury, but I've already heard it." Clint sighs and pats the side of his bed. "Nat, get over here."

She settles in, squeezing the hand he offers. He's never asked about the times she chooses to touch him versus the times that she doesn't. He gives her chances for contact, letting his hand fall whenever she flinches away. The urge for distance happens less and less. She's been a dozen different people in the past three months and they've all longed for him to touch her, yearning as a flower is for sunshine. (Her last identity was a professor of poetry. It's affecting her personal life.)

"You had other things to do," Clint says, squeezing back. "I had to get a scar to match the one I already had on the other leg." He's talking about the small but ugly scar on his left thigh, the one from pulling an arrow out his target so hard the arrowhead caught him in the thigh. That came up during a conversation about pouring disinfectant into wounds.

"I still wish I had been there."

"Well, I don't. It's undignified, a fellow agent seeing you bawling like a baby."

Natasha leans over in response, pressing a kiss to his forehead, crossing one more line. The expression on Clint's face is equal parts wondering and longing, appallingly naked for one of their profession. It looks good on him. She leans back, fingers still tangled in his. The knot of anger has unraveled, the fear at its center fallen away. "You've still saved my life one more time than I've saved yours," she says, voice rough with sudden emotion. She blinks once, stubborn, and the world clears.

"I don't know about that," Clint murmurs, but he leaves it there.

The painkillers slide him back into sleep a short time later. His grip on her hand slackens. Natasha holds on, keeping vigil until dawn washes pale yellow across the sky.

_right side of the neck_

Clint takes his coffee as black as Natasha does, drains six cups of it after Thor leaves with Loki. Natasha told him about some of the punishments the gods dealt in Norse legend, lets him picture his captor as a captive under an endless drip of poison. It's a suitable fate for someone who chiefly deals in lies.

Neither quips nor coffee are enough to keep sleep at bay, and with sleep come the nightmares. He never dreams in color and yet the world is blue, all of its edges outlined in frost. He wakes with a scream tearing out of his throat, the force of his thrashing enough to tip over everything on his bedside table. He rolls out of bed and onto the floor, slamming his alarm clock against the wall so hard it cracks. Destruction feels good, a hot rush to counteract the chill, something to wrap his hands around and choke--

"Clint!"

He closes his eyes. There are blue lights under his eyelids. He can breathe, at least. "How real is any of this that's happening right now?"

"Pretty damn real." He's conscious of Natasha kneeling beside him--must be kneeling, judging from the angle she leans over him. She takes his hand and lines up the little scar on her thumb with the scar on his palm. "Remember these?"

"I think a scar is the most romantic thing you've ever given me."

"It's the only thing I've ever given you."

He opens his eyes to Natasha, smile and hair equally vivid against the pallor of her skin. She must have turned on the light when he first fell to the floor. She looks as tired as he must. "You definitely gave me a concussion today," he parries, pushing himself into a sitting position. "What are you doing here?"

She shrugs, drawing attention to the swath of collarbone her shirt exposes. Clint watches her face as she says, "I wanted you to get a good night's sleep." Natasha purses one side of her mouth just a bit when she holds back information. She must be aware of it on some level; it's a tell peculiar to Natasha Romanov, agent of SHIELD. He raises an eyebrow and she adds, "I wasn't ready to say goodbye."

Clint swallows. The lamp on the floor rolls slightly to one side, shifted by some subtle force of gravity. "I thought about asking you to stay."

"I heard you thinking it." Natasha raises her free hand to her neck. She tilts her head and her hair falls to one side. Her fingertips rest about an inch or so below her jaw. She still has dirt under her nails from the battle. "See this? Chicken pox scar from when I was five. Petrovitch made sure we all got it. We were kept healthy enough, but they made the disease part of our training." She moves her fingers to the left. "I don't remember how this one got here. I have a lot of scars like that. Which is worse? The scar with the lost story or the lost child with the scar?"

He's leaning forward as soon as she pauses for breath, letting go of her hand to wrap his arms around her, bury his face in her neck. There's the faintest tang of smoke under the smell of her soap, her skin. She's only had the one shower, then, and had him under surveillance for the rest of the time. "You aren't lost," Clint says, and finds the scars on her neck with his mouth, kisses them both.

Natasha exhales. Slowly, she puts her arms around him. "You aren't, either. I found you." The force of her last declaration draws her back, but Clint scarcely has time to feel the loss before Natasha's mouth is on his in unspoken promise: _We found each other._


End file.
